Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Open Letter from Texaco's Victims to Chevron's Shareholders

http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2014/0528-open-letter-from-texacos-victims-to-chevrons-shareholders
We are those who Chevron is constantly trying to silence. We come to
you, the shareholders, looking for the most basic empathy and respect we
deserve as human beings. We ask but a minute of your time to read this
brief letter in its totality.
You have been told – and will be told again and again – that the trial
in Ecuador is but a fraud. However, no one has been able to deny the
damage oil drilling has done to our land and lives. A great many of us
are sick; others have already passed away. This tragedy came to happen
because Texaco chose to design and construct installations with sub-par
(or outright obsolete) technology: instead of using tanks, they drilled
huge, unlined open-air pits directly in the ground, and used them to
contain all the sludge and toxic water. This waste was then poured
directly into the rivers of our Rainforest. Even though the technology
was readily available, the designers and operators at Texaco did not
re-inject A SINGLE DROP OF TOXIC WATER back into the ground, as they
should've done. When they left they simply buried their pollution, where
it remains still, poisoning us.

That's an undeniable fact.
Chevron's management constantly speaks about a (nonexistent) fraud. What
they haven´t told you, is that the judicial decision upon which they
base their fraud allegations is anchored on the testimony of an
Ecuadorian judge that was separated from the judiciary under very
suspicious circumstances. You're probably also unaware of the fact that
we were denied of basic constitutional rights, such as being heard by a
jury of our peers. The vast majority of us have never set foot in the
United States, and probably never will – however, we've already been
labeled as criminals that tried to "extort" money out of an American
corporation. We, the real victims in this matter, do not have the
necessity of bribing any judge: the evidence on record is clear,
eloquent and powerful, and the harm cannot be hidden. Also, suggesting
that humble residents of the Amazon have funds to orchestrate such a
fraud is preposterous.
The truth is, we originally filed suit in New York in 1993, and it was
Texaco's lawyers who asked for the company to be tried in Ecuador. Our
only alternative was to re-file the legal action in our country's
courts, and after 20 years of bitter battle, we emerged victorious. But
now, our legitimate demands for justice are seen as a fraud in the eyes
of a New York judge: a scheme supposedly planned by American lawyers.
This judge determined that we, the victims, don't exist (by calling us
"the so-called plaintiffs") and called for the decisions from our
domestic tribunals to be ignored worldwide.
READ MORE: http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2014/0528-open-letter-from-texacos-victims-to-chevrons-shareholders